Tutor Times The Jewish Coalition for Literacy Newsletter Summer 2008
In This Issue Community Partnership: The Path to Success for Hundreds of Students New Advisory Committee members Why Does Ted Bamberger Tutor? Beth Am/Costaņo School & JCL Team Up Joan Green on Discussing a Story Ulloa's Reading Night a Success My First Season as a Tutor Quick Links Sign Up for a Training - Donate to JCL Simply CLICK HERE, and be sure to choose "JCRC's JCL Project" in the Donation Designation section.	A message from Roberta Rothman, Bay Area Director Dear Tutors and Friends of JCL: As the new school year approaches, we hope you are enjoying the summer and plan to return in the fall. Over the summer the JCL staff worked to update the database, the website and set dates for all the trainings and workshops for the coming school year. (See the website www.jclread.org for training dates) Joan Green, JCL Reading Specialist revised the handbook for the basic trainings and next fall JCL will provide workshops for parents with literacy and language challenges, to help them work with their children at home. The teacher evaluations are in and (it looks like) JCL tutors have been successful in raising the reading levels of their students. Not only that but the evaluations reflect the increase in student confidence. You are all truly doing a mitzvah. Your comments are important so I urge you all to send in your evaluations and also your Tutor Renewal Forms. If for any reason you are not happy with your current placement, please let us know. We want you to get the most out of your tutoring and will work with you to find a better placement. This year has been one of change, and for the better. Our Program Managers, Helene Tinkler and Jennifer Advani will be working more closely with the schools to make the placement process smoother, and Judy Pam-Bycel, Outreach Manager is reaching out to many community organizations to bring in more tutors. But you are the best recruiters, so please let people know about the program and encourage them to become tutors. We all look forward to welcoming you back this fall. Sincerely, Roberta Rothman Community Partnership: The Path to Success for Hundreds of Students Relationships, relationships, relationships. JCL Partnerships are expanding rapidly throughout San Francisco, the Greater East Bay and the Peninsula. The future of JCL is in building relationships: we are working to match synagogues, community organizations, and businesses with under-served elementary schools to create a literacy partnership through an ongoing relationship with each other. The People of the Book, Temple Sinai of Oakland's literacy project, is an exemplary model of the breadth and scope of a partnership with a school. Predating the founding of JCL, this project celebrated its tenth anniversary by honoring the chair, Judy Zollman, the life force volunteer behind The People of the Book Project, at a recent Shabbat service. Judy also received the 2008 Bay Area's Jefferson Award for Public Service in recognition of her efforts to improve literacy in the Oakland Unified School District. Congratulations, Judy. Thank you to all of the People of the Book associates for developing this wonderful program. You are the gold standard for how a program can develop...and thusly change the lives of so many deserving children. JCL encourages other temples, organizations, churches and businesses to develop literacy committees to start programs like this. JCL's role in developing these kinds of partnerships is to work with the school, selecting a site coordinator and facilitating the relationship between the organization and school partner. JCL also conducts the tutor training on site or in community locations and offers follow-up support and skill building conferences. The role of the partner is to develop a literacy committee (starting with 2-4 members) and recruit volunteers. The goal is for these partnerships between an organization and a school to flourish from year to year bringing new tutors, project ideas, energy, and resources. JCL hopes that synagogues, organizations and business will follow the footsteps of Judy Zollman and Rabbi Chester in developing successful projects through the partnership model and bring the gift of reading to hundreds of human hearts to help advance a civil society in which we all live. If you are interested in participating, please contact Judy Pam-Bycel, Outreach Manager, at 510-839-2900 ext; 274 or jpbcel@jcrc.org. New Advisory Committee members JCL is pleased to present several new members, Audrey Sockolov and Andy Coblenz. Audrey has finishied her fourth year, tutoring 2nd grade at Jean Parker Elementary school. An active member of the San Francisco community, Audrey has been a volunteer for the American Cancer Society, Naral and Temple Sherith Israel. Since joining the Advisory Committee, Audrey was a member of the Conference committee and helped to plan and run the San Francisco conference. Andy is a teacher of 5th and 6th graders at M.H. Tobias Elementary School in Daly City. Originally trained as a lawyer, Andy has been teaching in various public schools in the Bay Area for 10 years. Andy sits on the JCL Evaluation Committee and is working with the staff on updating our database. We are happy to have them on the committee.
Why Does Ted Bamberger Tutor? This JCL tutor smiles inside and out. I do this when I know I have contributed to the reduction in the reading deficiency identified by the teacher. You can imagine how I felt when the second grader, Elvira, began to read with the inflections appropriate to questions and exclamations. More importantly, I could sense her pride. My reward was to boost her self confidence. I imagined her saying, "I can read better now!" My effort to be part of the improvement in beginners' ability to read and comprehend began when I received an invitation from the Jewish Community Relations Council to join the then beginning JCL organization in San Francisco. Four years at the Boys' and Girls' Club, Columbia Park location, in the Mission preceded my current three at the G Peabody School on 6th Ave off California Street. This year I am experiencing a most welcome benefit, receiving before each session the materials from her second grade teacher that she wants me to read with Elvira. This way we are both focusing on material that will help her the most. "Two heads are better than one!" I enjoyed reading in elementary school. I am still stimulated by the printed page. I have a B.A. from Dartmouth College. Following 15 years in the manufacture of sweaters and knit hats, I continued representing factories to wholesale and volume distributors. During the past 25 years, and even now, I specialize in the export of sport fishing equipment, like lures, to distributors outside the USA. I am also currently a member of Project Read of the San Francisco Public Library. I try to attend all the tutor workshops dedicated to self-improvement. After all, I am paid by smiles, those on the faces of the learners and my own. -Ted Bamberger Beth Am/Costaņo School and JCL team up to provide books and training JCL partnerships create many possibilities for helping our public schools. One such example is Congregation Beth Am's partnership with Costano Elementary in East Palo Alto. The Costaņo School Book Project is a multi-faceted initiative that will enhance literacy and reading skills at Costaņo School. Co-sponsored by Beth Am, the East Palo Alto Kids Foundation (EPAK), and the Jewish Coalition for Literacy (JCL), the project encompasses library refurbishment and reading encouragement activities, including volunteer tutoring, literacy events, and organized family reading activities at the school. On June 3, JCL's own Joan Green led a parent literacy workshop in English and Spanish at Costaņo School. Designed to introduce parents to the fundamentals of literacy acquisition, this event was the first of many reading encouragement activities that are planned as part of the multi-year project. The turnout was exceptional; approximately half of the parents invited attended. As part of this project, every second grade student will be presented with a bookshelf built by Beth Am volunteers and stocked with donated books. Some of these bookshelves were presented before the literacy workshop. Richard Stark, coordinator of the project for Congregation Beth Am, presented the bookshelves. "Volunteers have spent hundreds of hours over evenings and weekends building 50 bookshelves for the Costaņo School second graders,as well as collecting books for distribution to the students and to improve the school's library," he said. "We're very excited about finally giving a bookshelf and books to each child to take home." The project has collected over 4,000 books through its book drives so far. Of these, 640 age-appropriate books were collected by third grade students at the Oak School in Los Altos when Mrs. Stephanie Tyson's third-grade class adopted the Costaņo School Book Project as their community service project for the year. The Oak School third graders also held a drive for recyclable cans and bottles, and as a result contributed $70.66 for the purchase of additional books. Book drives were also conducted at the Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School (Palo Alto), and at Santa Rita Elementary School (Los Altos). JCL commends Beth Am for creating such a wonderful partnership. Please take a look at the partnership possibilities at www.costanoschool.com. Joan Green on Discussing a Story Greetings tutors, from Joan Green, JCL Reading Specialist! While it is still summer there's time to think about tutoring as we look ahead to next year. In this article I'll focus on an important aspect of comprehension-discussion and asking questions about a story. Talking about the story is as important in its own way as reading it. In the reading process children get to listen and produce-they hear and pronounce words and sentences, they recognize different voices and emotions and reproduce them, based on the model you-the tutor-provide. And after the story is finished, children get to explore another level of meaning and understanding by discussing and expanding upon the circumstances of the story. That's where another significant aspect of your contribution emerges. You can structure the way in which a child thinks and reacts to the story. You can provide the basis for serious thought and excitement about learning. You may remember me saying before that Reading is a Thinking Act-it's not sounding out or pronouncing, but rather absorbing ideas and understanding situations. (Often children don't know that the reading is supposed to mean something-to them it's just a mechanical activity they do because they are told to!) It's crucial that you help children get meaning from what they read. How? By asking the right kinds of questions and letting the answers lead you both into good discussions, by getting the children to flex their mental muscles and become excited about the value of their own thinking. The easiest kind of questions to ask are about facts-who, what, where etc. You know the answers. They are right in the text and the child can find them too. The information is plainly stated. So please, be wary! If the children are well enough versed in English structure/word order, they can figure out an answer to a fact question and still not have the slightest idea what it all means-especially if vocabulary is lacking. It's important, then, not to use fact questions as the primary measure of what the child understands. What else can you use? Well, there are a few other question types that will verify and even generate understanding. I call them "authentic" questions because you don't know the answer ahead of time. Answers come from the child's experience, emotions and prior knowledge. And from yours too as you exchange questions. Authentic questions can include inferences, values opinions and personal reflections, such as: Inference-reading between the lines-for example: Tutor: How did you know that the boy liked dogs? (when the text never stated it) Student: -Because he played with the dog right away... -Because he let the dog lick his face... (The answer is inferred from pictures or situations described, not stated ) Values-good/bad, right/wrong, fair/unfair-for example: (Answers will vary) Tutor: Is it good to let a dog lick your face? Is it right to go up to a dog before you know he's friendly? (Even kindergarteners have opinions about values questions.) Personal Reflections-You questions-for example: (Answers will vary) Tutor: Would you let a dog lick your face? or Have you ever let a dog...? Do you have a dog? Do you like dogs? etc. (These are the easiest questions to ask and create very fruitful discussions) Any one of these question types can spark a lively discussion about the child's world and yours and the world of the story. It's valuable to compare events of the story with the child's life and the outside world. By doing this, you expand the child's horizons and show that reading has meaning both on and beyond the printed page. You also confirm that children's thoughts are worth listening to. Ultimately, they begin to feel the benefit of thinking as part of reading. And then another group of young minds is ready for learning! I don't know how many times tutors have said, "My students read 'fluently', but when I ask questions about the story, they don't understand a thing!" Asking authentic questions makes that less likely to happen, especially if the reading or questioning time is augmented by vocabulary building and other language enhancement activities-which we can explore next time. For now, I want to thank you all for a job well done and look forward to wecoming you back refreshed and ready for another good year in the Fall. All best, Joan Please remember that I'm available to work with you on any questions or concerns about tutoring. Don't hesitate to contact me by phone (415) 751-4992, or e-mail at jfgreen2@aol.com. Ulloa's Reading Night a Success Ulloa Elementary puts on a Reading Night for parents and students by Michael Samson JCL was well represented at Ulloa Elementary School's Reading Night on a cold, Tuesday, winter evening in late February. Long time JCL Ulloa volunteers Debbie Frank, Chana Orner, Maureen and Michael Samson, and JCL Bay Area Director Roberta Rothman were JCL participants. More than one hundred children listened and responded to short stories read with gusto by the volunteers. They were accompanied by a like number of parents and siblings who listened to the stories and/or enjoyed refreshments, including homemade chocolate chip cookies and other baked goodies, provided by the Samsons. Ulloa has a high percentage of foreign born students and English is not spoken or is a second language in many homes. The school consistently tests among the top elementary schools in San Francisco. Parents, teachers, administrators, and volunteers work together in achieving these results. Programs such as Reading Night, Math Night, Science Night, and after school assistance programs demonstrate a strong commitment to children. JCL has been sending volunteers to Ulloa for more than eight years. Our volunteers enjoy their association with the school and are looking forward to the new school year. My First Season as a Tutor After training with the JCL tutoring program, I met my first grade students. Initially, I worked with a boy and girl from different classes, but one girl in the boy's class was so insistent, that I took her on as well. In Holbrook, the teachers asked that I work with the books from class. I quickly learned that reading was only a part of the tutoring. These students had other problems, including family problems. They craved the extra attention. They missed me if I didn't come one week. They worked hard on their reading and in the process at least with one student, we discovered she was really very clever, which never showed up in class. With a boy from a Spanish speaking household, we worked not only on reading, but pronunciation. There are many ways to help these students. When people say how great it is that I am helping the children, I realized that in fact they were doing far more for me than I could ever do for them. The hugs, the smiles on their faces when they saw me, was a reward I never counted on. Leonard Dorin, Congregation B'nai Tikvah Holbrook Elementary School, Concord Thank You! The JCL staff warmly thanks the following: The Gideon Hausner students who tutored at Theuerkauf Elementary this year. Austin Burke, our JVS Kohn Intern, for his wonderful work this summer helping with the website redesign. Betsy Rosenthal for hosting the Peninsula tutor appreciation event at her loverly home. Books Inc. in San Francisco for hosting the San Francisco tutor appreciation event. The Conference Committee - Jerilyn Gelt, Marilyn Nebenzahl, Audrey Sockolov, Beth Wolinsky, and Rick Weisberg - for planning not one but three conferences. Jewish Coalition for Literacy 415-957-1551